With the growth in functionality and reach over the years, social media has changed the way brands interact with their current and potential customers. Social media has changed the business landscape both for companies that have adopted it and those who have not.
All social networking sites are allowing users to become curators of the content they find interesting. Businesses who have learned to create content and engage in conversations are already ‘in the stream' – are attracting users to interact with their favorite brands. Companies that have embraced this have an ever-growing advantage over those who have not.
According to a study – 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users are now using social media sites once in a month. Total number of time spent online accounted for 12% and globally this time spent is 15.6%. Social media has also decreased the usage of web based email. Social media is going to be a horse of long race and hence its application in business world gains more importance.
But the question arises why companies need Social media in their businesses?
Jacob Morgan with Chess Media Group wrote a nice approach to convince potential clients on adopting social media. According to him- "If I told you that many of your customers and prospects interacted and communicated in the social space would you invest in having a presence there?
"What if I told you that you would never know you made a single direct dollar off of any of those customers and prospects in the social space, but you knew that they were still there, would you still invest?"
Now step in the executive's shoes for a moment and imagine how you would react. Would you say, "Yeah, even still, I refuse to go where my customers are." Of course you wouldn't and that is why this approach is effective.With his statements it is clear that social media is an effective tool to enhance the business in a lucrative manner.
These days it is very essential to build a company with social media. Application of social media at different levels:
Q. Senior Level- I am an opinion leader with robust
knowledge base, how can I raise awareness by social media?
A-
Create a blog, Tweeter.
Q. Marketing Level- I need channels to place our content and therefore to increase the traffic?
A- Digg, Reddit, Youtube, StumbleUpon, Newsvine.
Q. PR Level- I want to know and respond to what the public is saying about our products/services?
A- Technorati , Amazon. Comments on- Digg, Reddit, Youtube, StumbleUpon, Newsvine
Q. Sales/HR Level- I want social networking tools to create new business and locate new employees?
A- LinkedIn, Facebook.
So we can easily observe the usage of online media in all business levels. Now again there is a question
how to apply social media in business world? There are some major steps to be taken care of before implementing social media in business:-
Never use your political and moral beliefs while dealing with social media sites as majority of users are of liberal mindset and they join the conversations as per their choice.
Now a days people are more watchful about social spam so even you are acknowledged but misguided marketing efforts may be taken as spams by online users.
Buying votes to gain popularity for submissions on social media websites is even more sulked upon than is buying links in order to rank well in search engines.Asking for votes in social media is fine – people have the right to decide your content is not as per their liking and not to vote for it or vice-versa. However, when someone has bought a link or a vote, there is no social discretion. Money should never change hands in the social media world.
Every community is different from another though same people can use different communities. Like their behaviour on LinkedIn is totally different from what they communicate on Facebook. So, every social media effort has to take the dedicated audience into account.
Your blogsite, website must be appealing to the target audience. Even though you have the most compelling content but an ugly layout of website, dull colour & bad text format may distract audience to read it and go through it.
Social media runs on the popularity of comments. People cab be very mean in
bringing down the things which are popular. They may post both bad and good comments. So take those nasty comments as a part of your success and work upon them.
Timing is the most crucial part of content posting. For example content posted on Monday to Thursday are noticed more in comparison to the same content posted on Friday to Saturday as during the last 2 days users want to read less provoking thoughts. Along with that content posted on midnight is observed less in comparison to content posted during daytime. Though good content can become popular at any point of time irrespective of days.
Hence, avoiding social media and not integrating it into your business model is a dangerous decision. And by following the necessary rules before implementing online media in your business world will give you the success and majority of the benefits.
Heena Lodha
The author is a business researcher with CheckBuzz, a social media monitoring company.
About
CheckBuzz : A Social Media Monitoring Company, which tells brands/corporates what bloggers, journalists, powerful consumers, or even ordinary people are saying about them. Having a healthy experience of 3+ years, this company gives its solutions on
Social media consulting, Social media marketing and Social media monitori
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